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Florida's Version Of TIA May Spread To Other States
Annoying Cowwart writes "Looks like TIA is coming back, this time through the by-the States-but-all-together backdoor. Now called M.A.T.R.I.X. ('Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange'). See the
Washington Post article for details. I wonder: do they have to try hard to find such apt names for their projects or does it come naturally? (For German speakers, there is another article about this in Der Spiegel.)"
Actually, if you read only the first letters, it spells "MATIE". I suppose they weren't going for much of a pirate theme though. "Yarr, matie, we be catchin' us some terrorists, arr.."
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
All we need now is to figure out how to clone a blue-haired 14-year-old-girl to pilot a large robot to defend it...
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Acronym
Main Entry: acronym
Pronunciation: 'a-kr&-"nim
Function: noun
Etymology: acr- + -onym
Date: 1943
: a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term.
(emphasis mine).
M.A.T.R.I.X is not an acronym.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Sure, you may joke, but there's an important reason for government surveillance of consumer habits.
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Terrorists are everywhere. Yes, even in your breakfast cereal. Did you ever doubt it when they started checking supermarket discount records?
Now you tell me: who's going to protect you when terrorists hitch a ride straight to your basement in that new Sears washer box?
http://safetystate.com/ss.cgi?action=material&id=
Last week the news said airlines were looking at the credit agency and medical insurance reports of every passenger. People with low credit scroes were flagged for additional scrutiny. I guess because these are easy databases to access, not because they are informative.
At least they picked a name that should strike the proper level of fear into joe citizen. When it was TIA no one had a clue, it was almost as good as the PATRIOT Act (who could vote against being a patriot right?). But with a name like MATRIX thanks to the media machine people will naturally associate it with total helpless control and loss of basic rights.
This program will be quickly dropped, the politicians will say it was all that guys idea *point long finger* and it'll come up again under the name "USA FLUFFY BUNNIES AND PEACE ON EARTH FOR EVERYONE Act"
Vote no on USA FLUFFY BUNNIES AND PEACE ON EARTH FOR EVERYONE!
And what if they *gasp* get it wrong?
And what about when someone who shouldn't gets access to the system and either farms details, or better yet, frames you?
And what about when you may actually have a reason to organise a rebellion because your government has turned your country into a police state the KGB would envy?
I've lived with real terrorism all my life - I was 5 minutes away from being killed on one occasion I know of for certain (Manchester IRA bombing) and probably more. As far as I'm concerned this "keeping track of YOU so they can't blow you up" is nothing more than a way to monitor and control a nation, it has nothing to do with stopping terrorists.
I've done lots of privacy work, especially concerning driver's license privacy.
About a year and a half ago, a well known local school board member (known for being very troublesome to other school board members, but extremely well respected and liked by the voters in his community) had an article printed about him in the newspaper saying that he had two driver's licenses.
The question was, how did they find out he had two licenses, since license data is protected by both state and national law. Unless the DMV actually had decided to take action against him (which they had not) someone with access to the database must have called up the paper.
So I called him up, and he said a few days before the article came out, he and his daughter were pulled over. His daughter was driving, but they were in a rented car, so the officer wanted to see his license, because he rented the car. The officer recognized who he was, talked about their military records, and let them on their way. So the hypothesis was that this officer then scanned through the computer, and found the two licenses, and called up the newspaper--which is where the violation of law occurred.
(With regard to the two licenses, the person claimed that it was an error on the part of the DMV. The two records had two different SSNs.)
Anyway, so I did the obvious. Based on freedom of information act, we asked the DMV and the state highway patrol (who runs the computer that the cops use in this state) to give us the data on who accessed the license records and when (a simple record request.)
The DMV cooperated immediately...and nothing of consequence there...they checked his license(s) records when the local newspaper called, to confirm whether or not he did have two licenses (an act which may have violated DPPA (driver's privacy protection act) but that hasn't been determined yet.)
The state highway patrol said that they didn't have to give up their records. Well, I checked through everything I could, but I couldn't find a single place which gave them that authority (though they claimed it.) They said they would perform an internal investigation, and give us the results of that investigation, but would redact the information concerning whom actually looked at his license(s) records.
The story ends there, more or less. The school board member decided that this issue wasn't worth pursuing, given time and resources. And he felt that he already caused enough trouble.
(Actually the story ends this way...two agents of the DMV came to his house and told him that if he gives up the two licenses, they will just reissue him one license at the DMV and that will be that. I don't need to tell you that this is pretty irregular behavior by the DMV (they didn't even charge him) but even with all the time I spend researching the DMV, I can't figure out why they did it.)
I guess the point is, the ability to get auditing records of such a database is vital for making sure it's being used correctly. When a state agency refuses to give up auditing records on yourself, it implies that a need for greater oversight on how they operate.
(My signature talks about my current driver's license privacy project in New Jersey...I wanted yall to know that it didn't happen in NJ, but in Ohio.)
Well, at least a drug-smuggling-pilot-turned-snitch is a somewhat better person to have in charge of all of our personal information than Disgraced Iran-Contra Felon John Poindexter (as El Reg tends to call him... or something similar).
Anyone who can remember back to the year 2000 knows that the State of Florida can certainly be trusted to handle millions of documents in an appropriate fashion.
They will get it wrong, it's a certainty. I work for the State of Florida and deal with FDLE every day, and like any other cops they're not above harassment, vendettas, and abuse of power. More dangerously, some of the techs and investigators are just not all that bright. The law enforcement databases that are being pulled together are chock full of erroneous information. The clerks who enter the data don't make a living wage and there's a high turnover, so the quality of data entry is very low. Those who work in law enforcement are aware of this, but it's very hard to challenge something once it's in there, and they like it that way. If you know someone it helps.
What's most fascinating to me is the bit about "commercially available databases" being included as well. Does this include your credit card receipts? How about the data collected by your supermarket discount card?
PS for the Non-Americans out there . . . I know the development of the culture of surveillance might be disturbing to you, but all we want is to be on reality TV. The Bush administration understands this deep-seated human need and is doing all they can to get us all on camera.